Origins
by Checkerboards
Summary: O, sorrow! Why dost borrow heart's lightness from the merriment of May? - John Keats -Sorrow 1-
1. The Not so Friendly Handshake

_Foreword: In the fall of 2005, I got bored and created a new villain in the Batverse. I wrote a story about her - my very first bit of Batman fanfic. And then I wrote another. And another. Since then, her world has spawned more new characters than I ever dreamed it would (including a certain Riddler henchgirl by the name of Jackie) and it entertained me and kept me sane while I went through my own personal hell. _

_So, without any further ado, here's the villainess that taught me to write. I hope you like her as much as I do._

* * *

The month of April in Gotham City is wonderful. As in most big cities, the change of seasons is not visible by the changing colors of the plant life, but the changing plumage of its residents. Boots are traded for colorful shoes that click angrily around filthy puddles of rainwater and sludge on the sidewalks. Bulky fleece-lined hats are stored away in closets in favor of bare heads and fluffy hairstyles. 

But more than the changing human scenery, April brings a taste of something new. Possibilities seem to sprout up from the pavement in precisely the way that the trees don't. Things are wonderful and shiny and everything smells like the fresh, green scent of success and optimism.

Provided, of course, that you are outside. Some residents of Gotham wouldn't notice the fresh newness of Spring if it whacked them upside the head with a bolt of lightning. The young man gazing out the window, however, is not one of them.

He is tired of working. He's spent two years at the same bank, watching the customers, watching the tellers, guarding them from nothing much. He's a smart lad, after all, who has picked his place of employment carefully. It's a small bank, it's fairly unimpressive, and most importantly, it doesn't correspond with any theme that any criminal has ever come up with. It is on a nondescript street in a boring part of town. There's no _sparkle_ to the place. It's not anything that anyone would be proud to list on their Top Ten Places I've Robbed.

Of course, some people don't care about publicity. Some people don't care for themes. And some people need money too much to care where it comes from...

* * *

As a security guard, Jimmy's responsibilities were fairly simple: watch the customers and try not to fall asleep. He'd been watching them all day, and so far, he'd only fallen asleep twice. It had been a fairly normal Friday: busy, with furtive managers trotting in with their hard-earned cash to be deposited in the bank's vaults. But now, during that long, slow drag from just after lunch until three PM, the pace had dropped down to a crippled crawl. There were all of two customers in the bank, and one was old Mrs. Green who made up business just to talk to someone. The thick, mindless boredom was almost a tangible force in the little lobby. 

The other two guards had left for their own lunch break, claiming that the right of seniority meant that they could leave Jimmy alone and ravenous while they plundered the nearest restaurant. He sighed and leaned up against the wall, watching the clock tick slowly onward toward his break and the cold little ham sandwich that waited for him in his locker.

A small group of construction workers, with mud splatters on their flannel shirts and hard hats, stomped by him. His daydreams of ham were rudely interrupted when one of the construction workers slammed into him. "Hey," he protested, picking up his hat from the floor.

"Sorry, shrimp," one of them muttered at him. Another one elbowed the speaker in the midriff. "I mean, officer," he corrected himself.

Well, that was refreshing. A little respect at last! Jimmy returned to his post, watching Mrs. Green make yet another attempt at making friends with the bank manager, who looked like he'd rather jump naked off the nearest bridge than listen to her yammer on about her cats for one more second.

He ran his eyes once more over the construction guys, who were laboriously printing out information on their blank deposit slips. Nestling back against the wall, he settled his eyes on the clock again and watched the second hand slowly tick toward lunchtime. _Oh, ham sandwich, I hear you calling..._

The door swung open again, revealing a short, bald man who was ushering in a young woman swathed in a long blue coat. She was facing the little man, so Jimmy couldn't quite see what she looked like under the curtain of reddish hair that swung over her face. She was maybe a little too pudgy, but hey, compared with five dirty construction workers and withery little Mrs. Green, she was definitely easy on the eyes.

His mind was split evenly between the ham sandwich and the girl's torso, so he didn't really notice that she was getting closer to him until he realized that her blue coat was filling his vision. Embarrassed to be caught staring, he jerked his head upward and met her eyes.

"I'm sorry, miss...sssson of a _bitch_!" he hissed, finally seeing that her face was liberally smeared with gray makeup. She was a _rogue_!

What was a rogue doing in _his_ bank? In daylight? Alone? Didn't rogues normally rob places at night? How the hell was he supposed to get Batman here in the daytime? Who was she, anyway?

He yanked his gun from its holster and pointed it at her. He could find all of that out after he had her securely handcuffed to the nearest stationary object.

"Put the gun down, sweetie," she advised him in a low murmur. "You don't want to get in my way."

"Freeze!" he shouted, hoping to jar the other occupants of the bank into action. Maybe the tellers would hit the silent alarms. Maybe the manager would get on the phone with the cops. Maybe the construction workers would take a stand and floor this uppity bitch!

The burly men were moving in her direction. He scowled, trying his best to look like Bruce Willis, and said "Now you listen to me."

The girl beckoned at the men. As one, they extracted handguns from various pockets and hiding places. One of them took off his hard hat and pulled out a gun as if he was a magician used to dealing with_ very_ tough crowds. Every single gun barrel slowly pointed in his direction. "Well?" she purred, watching Jimmy's face go sickly pale. "I'm listening."

"You...I'll shoot you," he muttered, his hands starting to shake.

"Sure you will," she said patronizingly, patting him on the head like a puppy with one black-gloved hand. "Down on the ground, folks," she said, turning to the rest of the patrons of the bank. "Tellers, open the vault, blah blah blah, you know how it goes, right?" Her little smile shrank a bit when no one moved. "I said _down_," she ordered, pointing at the ground. "My boys get a bit impatient sometimes. You!" she said, pointing imperiously at a teller. "The vault." The teller nodded and scrambled to obey.

Jimmy watched in frozen silence as the bald little man handed out empty bags to the henchmen, who swarmed into the vault and began stripping it bare. He had to stop them! How was he going to stop them all by himself? Oh, but wait...if he could just get the girl down, the henchmen would follow, right? Cut the head off a snake and the body dies. And anyway, what gave _her_ the right to order him around? She wasn't a rogue...not _really_...well, _he'd_ never heard of her, so she must be just another nut in a costume. Well, she was about to learn why no costumed fruitcake crossed Jimmy Pearson!

"I said freeze," he repeated, trying to sound as authoritative as possible.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "You're still here?"

"I will shoot you," he warned.

"Will you?" she asked, one eyebrow raised. She idly tugged at her gloves, removing them. "Listen..." She ran her gaze over his chest, where a gleaming little brass nametag flashed in the flat white lights. "Jimmy, have you ever shot yourself in the head?"

"No," he said, caught off-guard.

She smiled lazily. "Would you like to?"

"Shut up," he snapped. "You're not armed, and by the time your goons look over here, you'll be dead," he said. "Now, hands out so I can cuff you, then you call them off."

"You haven't been doing this long, have you?" she asked, smirking.

"Do it now or I'll shoot!" he growled.

"Fine." She rolled her eyes at the little bald man, who hadn't moved, and stuck her hands out in front of her, palms down.

It was a trap. It _had_ to be a trap. No one just...just _submitted_ like this! Not in Gotham, probably not anywhere in the world. But...well, he'd said he would shoot her, right? Maybe she was just a coward. Maybe he was actually going to be able to do something that it normally took the Batman to do: arrest a rogue!

He fumbled for the handcuffs on his belt and slowly approached her, gun still trained on her abdomen. The handcuffs clicked quietly around her wrists. She trailed her fingers almost lovingly across his palm as he pulled away.

_Ewww_, the guard thought, feeling something cold and gritty left on his skin. When was the last time she'd washed her hands? This was disgusting! This was...was...

This was the trap, and he'd walked right into it. Oh, he was such an_ idiot_...He frantically scrubbed his hand on the leg of his pants, trying to get the nasty black stuff off of him before it started doing whatever it would do...was it poisonous? Oh, he was so _stupid..._but he'd always been stupid, hadn't he? He'd always been nothing but a worthless little failure, good for nothing else but standing around and wasting time...a _monkey_ could do his job better than he could...and a monkey with its brain removed, at that. Oh, it was hopeless. He sat down hard on the floor, not caring what he landed on, and started to sniffle helplessly. She was going to rob the bank and it was all _his_ fault, everything was _his_ fault...

* * *

"Well, that was fun," Sorrow remarked as the lone guard crumpled to the floor, lost in a swirl of self-loathing. "Sammy, get me his handcuff key." She turned and glared at the rest of her goons. "What are you staring at? Fill those bags!" 

The men quickly returned to stuffing as much money as possible into their loot bags. Sammy, carefully gloved, clicked the key in the little locks and freed his boss. "Good," she said absently as she knelt down by the guard. He was starting to get that look on his face, the one that said _This gun is my only friend in the world_...She picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket. "Now, now, relax," she muttered as he whimpered.

It was the work of a moment to prop him up on a nearby support pole and wrap his arms behind it. Sammy, knowing what she'd want without needing orders, crouched behind the guard and tightened the cuffs around his dangling wrists. Sorrow held the guard's chin in one hand and tilted his face upward."This will be over in a minute." She forced a few tears from her eyes and dabbed them on his face.

One of the goons filling a money bag in the corner by the vault broke off filling his bag to take a glance at his boss. "What's she doin'?"

"She cries on 'em and then they don't wanna kill themselves," the other explained as he tied his bag shut.

"I can't believe she's lettin' him _live_," he said incredulously, louder than he intended.

"What was that?" Sorrow said icily, rising to her feet.

"Nothin! Uh, nothing, boss, really," he stammered as she strolled menacingly up to him.

"You think I should kill someone today?" she said quietly.

"No, boss, I never-"

"Are you volunteering?"

"_No_, boss, I'm sorry!" He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his spine as she glared up at him.

"Boss, he didn't know. He's new," Sammy offered from his perpetual spot at her elbow.

She looked him over once more. Sweaty, terrified, shaking...you could almost forget the fact that he'd personally been responsible for no less than twelve murders. "We'll discuss this later." She surveyed the rest of the room. "Are we finished?" she asked in a tone that clearly said that the answer had better be yes.

"Yes, boss!" chimed the rest of the goons.

"Then get out of here." She waited until the thugs had filed out and then turned a sunny smile on the bank manager. He twisted his hands agitatedly as he watched several thousand dollars stroll out the door. "See you around!" she said happily, and then breezed out of the bank.

Jimmy, slowly coming back to reality, tried to sniff his nose clear, a sound that was reminiscent of an elephant stomping into a mud wallow. "What happened?" he said stuffily. "Who _was _that chick, anyway?"

But the manager was already on the phone. "Hello, police?"

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: If you're wondering where all the DC-owned rogues and/or vigilantes are, don't worry - they're on their way. Thank you for reading!_


	2. Into the Limelight

Running from the police is easier than movies would have you believe. With the aid of a plan and a lot of previous experience, it was easy to nip into the bank, relieve them of their spare cash, and nip back out again before the police could manage to drive across town to interfere.

They'd taken two cars to the bank. One, with a battered, rusty exterior, was the official henchmen car. The sleek little blue sedan was Sorrow's. Her henchmen were currently loading the sedan's trunk with their moneybags as if they were a fire brigade putting out a house fire with a set of buckets.

Sorrow settled herself in the passenger seat, keeping an eye on her boys with the aid of the side mirrors. The trunk slammed shut as the last of the henchmen headed back to his assigned car. Sammy slid into the driver's seat of Sorrow's car and started it up, guiding them into the flow of traffic with a loud squeal of tires.

Sorrow managed to hold on to her grim dealing-with-subordinates face for a full ten seconds after they'd left the bank before a burst of laughter popped out of her. "Did you see his _face_ when the boys pulled out their guns? Oh, I wish I'd had a camera."

Sammy drove on, silently.

"And that manager! He almost burst a blood vessel watching us take all that cash! Oh, Sammy, that was...Sammy?" she asked, finally noticing his silence. He normally would have been laughing just as hard at the memory of the manager as she had been a moment ago.

"Yeah, boss?"

"Sammy, what's up? You're way too quiet over there."

He sighed and veered to the right. "Boss, you touched that kid."

"Yeah. So?"

"You never did that at a heist before."

"Look, Sammy, we've been over this. I cried on him, didn't I? He'll be fine."

"I'm not worried about _him_." Sammy sighed again. "Boss, now they know you're...different."

"So what?" Sorrow crossed her feet on the dashboard and examined her gloves. "Y'know how many other..._different_ people there are in this city?"

"Yeah, I know," Sammy grunted. "But differences get you noticed."

"Sammy, I have lived in Gotham for twenty years," Sorrow pointed out. "I was _born_ here. I'm not exactly new, y'know. What are you so worried about?"

"Batman."

"Batman?" Sorrow snorted. "Sammy, I've been pulling jobs for what, three years now? The Batman doesn't bother with me. I'm under his radar."

"Not now, you're not," Sammy muttered. "Now everyone knows about your...your hands."

"They knew before," Sorrow pointed out. "Well, the boys knew, and they're not exactly quiet types."

"But_ Batman_ didn't know."

"You're telling me that the Bat actually may have _missed_ something?" She laughed. "And does the sun rise in the west now?"

"Boss, the Batman doesn't like different people," he went on doggedly. "Up 'til now you were just another crook to him. Okay, you had the costume, but costumes aren't anything big, not in this town. But now he knows you've got...powers."

"I do not," she snapped, glaring at her shiny black gloves. "This is not a _power_. This is an annoyance."

"It's a threat," he snapped back.

"How do you know? What are you, some kind of Bat-expert?"

"I've been _working_ in this town for twenty years," he emphasized, "and I was around when the Bat first started showing up. I'm warning you. He hates people with powers, and he will stick to you like a burr on a dog if you aren't careful."

Sorrow drew her feet back off of the dashboard, suddenly all business. Sammy might not be the brightest guy around, but he had a definite feel for trouble. "Sammy...you really think the Batman might track us down?"

"I wouldn't be sayin' it if it wasn't true."

"Hell," she muttered. She'd just have to come up with a way to deal with him...

* * *

Sorrow generally spent her evenings on the roof of her warehouse hideout, watching the river glimmer in the moonlight as she let her thoughts wander. The damp April breeze stirred up the cuffs of her pajamas. She sighed and knocked them back into place with the back of one ungloved hand. 

The heist had gone well. She could hear her henchmen down in the warehouse, discussing it and muttering to one another about the possibility of a visit from the Bat-clan. Idly, she wondered if they realized just how well their voices carried through the enormous hole in the roof.

She kicked her dangling feet over the alleyway, watching her heavy black ankle boots swing almost with a life of their own in the chilly spring air. That last job had supplied them with enough cash to live off of for the next six months! Why wasn't she happier about it?

It was lonely, being the leader of a gang. Oh, sure, she had Sammy...but she couldn't really _talk_ to him. He was a good second-in-command, but she couldn't talk to him about anything other than business without feeling weird. He was almost as old as her father would have been! And she couldn't really make friends with any of her henchmen. That would be a terrible idea, first of all - henchmen got ideas and tended to take over when the boss showed them special interest - and anyway, who'd want to hang out with _them_? Their idea of a really good time was making sure that someone else had a really bad time.

A flash of light in the corner of her eye made her turn her head. The Batsignal reflected brightly off of the dense clouds that covered the sky in opaque gray fluffiness.

The sun hadn't even been down for ten minutes. Without taking her eyes from the circle of light, she slid backward on the roof and got to her feet. Oh, there was certainly a chance that they weren't summoning Batman because of her. It was possible. But then, a sudden rain of frogs was possible too, wasn't it? If the Batman really was coming here...

She whirled around and raced for the little stairway, slapping her bare palm against the wall as she thundered down to the ground level._Wham_! Her boots slammed into the half-rotten floor and snapped a chunk of wood off.

Taking a deep breath, she schooled her expression into one of arrogance. Female criminals in this town got zero respect unless they were backed up by a man or unless they were the very personification of bitchiness. Even Catwoman had been forced to occasionally break out the whip and teach certain thugs a lesson about underestimating her. She didn't dare present herself to her henchmen as anything but supremely confident, capable, and cold-hearted.

With the air of a princess sweeping into the throne room, Sorrow burst into the barracks, interrupting a game of poker between a few of her brighter henchmen and a fistfight between a few of the duller ones. "I have reason to believe that the Batman may show tonight," she said. "Prepare at once." The henchmen scattered quickly, abandoning cards and fight without a word. It had only taken two or three henchmen noisily killing themselves before the rest realized that Sorrow's word was absolute law. She permitted herself a tiny quirk of a smile and walked back to her own apartment.

Once her door had clicked shut behind her, she let her arrogant expression dissolve in favor of one that featured a mix of panic and anxiety. She wasn't in costume! She _couldn't_ face him in her pajamas. She yanked them off and swore as she realized she hadn't had her gloves on. Well, so much for _those_ pajamas. That stupid black stuff on her hands stained everything...where were her _gloves_? She frantically raked the room over with her gaze. One was laying neatly on her pillow. The other was missing. She crammed her right hand into the glove and ferreted through her things, looking for its mate. Clothes and bundles of cash went flying as she tore through her belongings. She finally found it under the bed, curled neatly around a massive dust bunny.

There was no _time_! He was probably leaving the signal now! She stuffed her left hand into her other glove and wriggled into her costume, cursing as the zipper stuck. Okay. Shoes, costume, gloves...she glanced into the mirror. The wind had whipped her long hair into a series of knots. She grabbed her brush and yanked them out, mumbling invective to herself as her gloves tangled themselves in her hair.

She ran one last check over herself. Makeup! She snatched up the jar of grey makeup and slathered it on as quickly as possible. Did she have time for the rest?...yes, she _had_ to have time, she wasn't about to face the Batman for the first time and _not_ be fully made up! With shaking hands, she inked a tiny blue teardrop on the outside corner of each eye.

There. She was as ready as she could possibly get. With one hand on the doorknob, she summoned up her best Queen of the Universe expression and stalked out into the main room.

The henchmen had vanished, just as they were supposed to. She wished she could have kept them around, just in case, but it was too risky. If things went according to plan and she did actually manage to lay hands on the Batman...well, people with specific, horrible memories tended to loudly relive them after she touched them. She couldn't risk anyone else hanging around to hear Batman's secrets, if he had any.

Sorrow looked around once more, just to be sure that her underlings had gone, and only then did she drop the act. "Sammy?" she called.

Sammy popped up into view. "Over here, boss - _dammit_," he swore as the knot he was attempting to tie slipped out of place. Sorrow hurried over.

"It'll be ready soon, right?" she asked.

"It's just about ready now," Sammy assured her, tying off the knot with a satisfied "There." He slowly shifted himself up onto his feet and dusted his hands off.

It was the best last-minute plan that she could come up with. She'd seen the other rogues and gangsters being captured on the news. Batman had all sorts of long-distance ways to take people down - nets, bolas, you name it. In order to neutralize him, she had to get him in close.

So, step one was to make it so that he couldn't use the bolas or the net. This explained the presence of three twin beds securely tied together in the middle of the room, and why Sorrow was currently settling herself down on the middle one. Nets and bolas couldn't wrap around three beds, and even if he tried using them, it would be easy to wriggle out from under them if they were unable to wind around themselves behind her.

So, that would get him right up close. She'd have to take care of the rest of it by herself. A spiral of dust floated down from the ceiling.

Someone was on the roof.

"Get out of here," she hissed at Sammy, who obediently raced back to the henchman barracks. Sorrow yanked her gloves off and stuffed them in a crack between beds. Oh, she hoped that this worked...

* * *

The first thing that most people noticed about Sorrow's warehouse hideout was the massive amount of boards nailed up over the old, broken windows. Most people, however, were not vigilantes who used the rooftops like their own personal stepping-stones across the city. So instead of boarded-up windows, the first thing that Batman noticed as he landed softly on the rooftop was the enormous gaping hole in the shingles. It was the perfect place to creep up to and peer inside. 

And that is why he stayed far away from it. They had to know that a hole that size existed. There was no possible way that it would be unguarded, either by traps or henchmen. So instead, Batman found himself a window that hadn't quite been boarded up the whole way and slithered through it.

It had taken him surprisingly little time to locate her hideout. From the bank's security tapes, he'd been able to identify two of the thugs, and as luck would have it, he'd found them both drinking in the same filthy bar not two blocks from here. He'd only had to break two chairs over them before they started babbling. He was almost disappointed - he'd hoped for a better showing for once.

Oh well. He landed on a little catwalk and crept closer, surveying the warehouse floor. There were no henchmen around, though they'd obviously been there recently. Smoke still curled lazily from an abandoned ashtray on one of the handful of tables in the huge room.

The only signs of life belonged to the young woman laid out neatly on the massive bed in the middle of the floor. Batman eyed it suspiciously. It was unexpected and therefore dangerous. He had to assume it was some kind of weapon, no matter how harmless it looked.

She was sweating through her makeup. A faint smile jerked one corner of his mouth upwards. Good. She was nervous, and nervous meant unreliable. The police and the tapes hadn't been able to reveal much about whatever she'd smeared on that guard. She didn't look like she had any kind of weaponry out now, though. If she had some kind of spray can or something in her sleeves, he could always just redirect it away from himself. Hadn't he had enough practice avoiding the Scarecrow's toxins over the years?

Well, there was no time like the present. He leapt from the catwalk and plummeted toward her, cape flaring dramatically in the low light. She shrieked and tried to sit up, twitching as her boot caught on the hem of her long blue coat. With one mighty pounce, he snagged her by the wrists. He yanked them up, intending to drag her off of the bed. Instead of fighting him, she shoved her hands upward and painlessly slapped the bottom of his chin with a sad little squelching noise.

He glared down at her. His gaze shifted to her hands as she wriggled her fingers...her _black-coated_ fingers...oh, damn it all. He dropped her hands and backed away, scraping madly at the little bit of exposed skin that was covered in whatever toxin she'd smeared on him...and a warm, damp wind was blowing on him now, scented with garbage and the hot, raw smell of blood as he knelt in the grubby alley with his lifeless parents...

* * *

_The pearls were rolling into the cracks of the pavement and..._and no, this wasn't real, this was a memory..._and the faint echoes of the fleeing mugger's footsteps were rattling in his ears..._no, he wasn't _there_ anymore..._and there was a tiny fleck of blood on his sleeve, and he couldn't take his eyes from it...such a bright, cheery red on his white, white sleeve..._

With a massive mental shove, he jammed the memories back to their rightful place in the back of his mind. He wasn't a newly orphaned eight-year-old. He was a fully grown adult. He was..._tied to a bed_? The rough fibers of rope were scratchy on his bare wrists and ankles. So...no gloves, no boots...and his lower back wasn't screaming at him, so no belt either. Well, at least she'd left his pants on...

And the mask! Right, because he was _Batman_, and he had a secret identity!

He couldn't hear any sounds that would indicate movement. Well, the sooner he made sure he was alone, the sooner he could wriggle out of this indignity.

He opened his eyes. "That was fast," she remarked. He tilted his head to better see her where she sat on the bed next to his.

Sorrow was crying. He felt superior about that for all of two seconds before he realized that _he_ was crying, too. "What did you do?" he snarled, taken off guard for a moment by a wave of embarrassment. Batman did not _cry_.

"I guess no one told you I was poison," she muttered, patting the last of her tears off of her face with a corner of the blanket that she sat on.

In point of fact, no. No one had told him that. The police had been _very_ ignorant about her, and the henchmen he'd interrogated had somehow let it slip their minds that Sorrow's toxins were biological, not manufactured. He resolved to let them know exactly how irritated he was about that omission the very instant that he turned Sorrow over to the police. Perhaps if they'd been a bit more talkative, he wouldn't currently be pinned down like a tent on a windy day.

Instead of answering, he resorted to the time-honored Bat-glare. It probably lost a little bit of potency since he was currently in a totally nonthreatening pose, but it still made her flinch backward. Well, good. At least _something_ was going according to plan.

"It's not _my_ fault," she protested, fiddling with a glove. Right. Like someone had held a gun to her head and _forced_ her to smear that stuff all over his face. "And anyway, I fixed it, didn't I?" She cocked her head and gave him a little smile. "I could have just let you...y'know. You almost did," she added. "Why do you think I took all your toys away?"

His equipment did not consist of _toys_. The intensity of the glare rose up a notch. Now it was entering Joker's-got-a-sidekick-as-a-hostage levels.

Sorrow looked away, fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. "Anyway, we've got a problem."

"We?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Yes, _we_, kemosabe," Sorrow snapped back, still not looking at him. "I need to get out of here without your interference. Now, I could just kill you." She considered her hands for a moment. "Well, you could kill you. You know what I mean. And you'd be dead, and that would be fabulous for all of twelve hours, maybe a whole day if I'm lucky." She finally met his eyes. "And then everyone who ever wanted to be the one to kill you would show up at my door and rip me apart. That is, if the people that love you to pieces hadn't done it first. No, thank you. I can do without a few million people out to kill me." She fussily straightened out a wrinkle in her coat. "So I have to let you go. _Not just yet_," she snapped, smacking his leg as she noticed his fingers slyly reaching for the knots. _Damn_.

Why would she possibly want to keep him around longer...oh, no. Oh _god,_ no. Not another monologue. He didn't think he could take another ten-minute explanation of how black was white, how up was down, and how it was perfectly logical and reasonable for her to rob banks and kill people.

He'd heard just about every excuse in the book over the years. Gambling debts, addictions to feed, terrible childhoods...yes, that was probably her story. Most of the other rogues in this city had had bad childhoods. Bane had been _born_ in a prison.The Ventriloquist's mother had been murdered right in front of him, and the Scarecrow...well, the Scarecrow had been nothing _but_ abused by everyone around him until he'd put on his costume.

But instead of starting in on her autobiography, Sorrow glanced at the door to what was presumably her henchmen's barracks. "No, what we're going to do is this. I'm going to leave, and then whenever you get around to untying yourself _you_ can leave. Good? Great. Happy trails." She slid off of the bed and moved out of his line of sight. His fingers immediately started prying at the troublesome little knots on his wrists.

The warehouse door creaked open. "Put your hands up and step away from the door!" The door in question shut with a resounding_ slam_! There was a flurry of footsteps as Sorrow thudded back to his side. "You called the _cops_?" she hissed.

"No." Well, in point of fact, no, he hadn't...oh, but he'd done his interrogations in that bar, hadn't he? And the bartender looked like the type of guy to report on the things he heard to the media so that he could make a quick buck or two. The media _loved_ getting footage of him, particularly footage of him with a rogue in front of a crowd of humiliated policemen. He redoubled his efforts on the hand farthest from Sorrow.

"Well, then why are they here, Mr. Smarty-Bat?" She bit her lip and looked around frantically. The rope around his wrist started to slip loose. Why wasn't she taking off her gloves and touching him again? Maybe she just hadn't thought of it. Maybe there was still too much antidote in his system for the toxin to work for a while. He fervently hoped that it was the second one. "I'll make you a deal, okay?" she asked.

"I don't deal with criminals."

"The deal is that I'll untie you and you can, um, arrest me...as long as you don't hit me. What?" she asked defensively when his glare turned scornful. "Look, I've _seen_ what you do when you're pissed off. I don't care where I go from here as long as it's not the hospital. Okay?"

A crackly voice boomed from a bullhorn outside. "Step outside with your hands up. We have the building surrounded."

"Look, I _know_ you don't want them coming in here and seeing you like this. Do we have a deal?"

"Untie me," he growled.

"That wasn't a yes."

"You won't _get_ a yes."

"Then maybe _you_ won't get untied!" she snapped, just before she bothered to look down at his wrists. The rope slithered quietly off of one of them as she watched. "Oh, hell." She dove for his feet, wrestling with the knots. "Remember, I'm helping you, and I didn't kill you. Remember how I didn't kill you? See? This is me_ helping_ you-"

"Shut up," he growled, kicking free of the untied ropes.

* * *

Arkham Asylum ran on a tight schedule. Without order, it was argued, no one would ever get back that sense of normalcy that they had to possess in order to regain their sanity. The inmates needed a regular schedule, one that never varied, one that had been beaten into their heads after only a few weeks of following it. 

At the moment, the schedule dictated that the more well-behaved inmates were allowed one final trip to the recreation room before bed. During the daytime, the inmates generally split up and did their own thing. But at night, it was understood that everyone would be quiet while they watched the news on the flickering little television.

It was the one program that everyone could agree on. Not only was it a vital link to the outside, but sometimes it gave them updates on how their friends were doing. Or their enemies, as the case was tonight. The crowd was gathered close, watching a live feed of the Batman taking down a new costumed criminal.

They gazed, silently, like cats watching a mousehole, waiting for a glimpse of either predator or prey. The perky announcer burbled "I'm getting word that-yes, the Batman is leading this one out personally, folks…" The footage blurred and bounced as the cameraman jockeyed for position against a horde of cops. Finally, as the scene stilled, the door to the warehouse flew open and out stepped-

"A _girl?_" snorted one of the men.

"Do you have a _problem_ with girls?" Poison Ivy's smooth voice purred, indicating that if the speaker currently didn't have any problems, she'd be happy to provide some.

"No," he said hastily, backing up until he was safely hidden in the horde of inmates.

The Arkham crowd leaned closer to the set as the screen flashed a close-up of the girl and the Bat.

"Is he…is he _crying_?" asked Edward Nygma, stunned.

Before anyone could answer, the camera zoomed in on the Bat. Everyone could clearly see the tears rolling over the cowl and down his cheeks. A hand gloved in shiny black vinyl appeared holding a handkerchief. He gave the owner of the hand a look that would have melted titanium. The camera panned over to reveal the girl in the long blue coat, who shrugged and stowed the handkerchief away in her pocket as Batman melted back into the night. She blew him a kiss, waved to the news cameras, then quietly sat herself in a police van and allowed herself to be taken away.

The news feed changed to an amusing local story on kittens and the Arkham group lost interest. Eddie, however, settled back in his hard wooden chair. No bruises. No blood. And the Batman was crying. Clearly, this was a riddle to be solved as soon as possible.

(_to be continued_)


	3. Hungry for Information

There is no possible way to wake up in an institution and mistake it for home. At home, the lights do not come on and off without your control. At home, the mattresses aren't dimpled in the middle from years of use, or if they are, they're _your_ dimples. At home, there isn't a constant buzz of conversation between the hundreds of other people who are your new neighbors. And most homes do not have that distinct tang of every imaginable body odor inefficiently masked behind antiseptic.

Sorrow hadn't slept much. The combination of meeting the Batman, being captured and packed off to wherever she was had provided her with enough nervous energy to power Gotham for a week. Instead, she'd spent the night catnapping and trying to figure out her new surroundings.

This was certainly an _odd_ jail. Sorrow had been in a handful of the local prisons, and she knew very well that most jail cells featured bars, not plexiglass. Most jails were overcrowded, and yet here everyone had their own cell. She'd spent a large portion of the night trying to remember which jails in the Gotham area had upgraded their facilities recently. None came to mind.

The other thing that stood in the way of her sleep was the pretty female voice from down the way, singing the same love song over and over through the long, dark night. She sounded incredibly familiar, but Sorrow couldn't remember any other lovesick felons that knew this particular tune. After a while, a rough female voice ordered her to shut her crazy mouth or she'd shut it for her.

Ah, now that explained more than it didn't. Most jails did have sick people - you only went to Arkham if you were _criminally_ insane, after all, and normal non-crime-related psychosis merely meant that you might spend a little more time in protective custody than the average inmate - so Sorrow wasn't really surprised to hear that there was a lunatic living down the way. She could handle one lunatic.

The main thought that kept her eyelids propped open long after the singer had gone quiet was that she didn't know where she was. When she'd arrived in the back of the windowless cop van, she hadn't seen much of the outside other than a steel door surrounded by bricks. She'd been hustled inside, asked a series of strange and inane questions, dressed in their uniform as if she was an oversized Barbie doll and shoved halfheartedly into an empty cell. They'd barely said anything to her, other than the questions. Normally, prison officials were very eager to press home the point that you were in _their_ house, with _their_ rules, blah, blah, blah, we're in charge and you are not. No one had even hinted at such a thing to her. Well, maybe that was because they were the night shift...

But that brought up a whole new series of questions. Prison transfers weren't done during the night. And, come to think of it, they hadn't actually bothered to book her, either. Well, maybe the fact that they couldn't exactly take her fingerprints had something to do with it...but it was odd, nonetheless.

The sun had begun to rise, sending little squares of light through the heavily barred windows in the empty cell across the hall. Sorrow kicked her blanket off and stood up, pacing the little six-by-six room that would be her home for the near future. The cell was pretty nice, as cells went. The bed was fairly soft and there wasn't much graffiti etched into the beige paint covering the hard cement walls. When she stood up, she was able to brush the ceiling with her fingertips.

Not that she'd seen her fingertips recently. They'd taken away her gloves and given her a pair of cheap latex ones instead, the kind that fifties housewives wore while doing dishes to avoid getting wrinkly fingers. They were a glaring neon shade of pink with wrists that extended halfway to her elbow. She felt ridiculous with them on and had done her best to camouflage them by stuffing them up the sleeves of her gray institutional garb.

A guard, idly toying with the gun on his hip, opened her door. "Come on. Breakfast."

"I'm not hungry."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't care. You're going."

Well, with a charming argument like that, how could she refuse? She slid off the bed and walked uncertainly out into the hallway. He slammed her door closed and, with one hand wrapped around her upper arm as if he was dragging an overloaded luggage cart, directed her silently down a series of twisting hallways. When they reached the open cafeteria doors, which were flanked by a pair of burly guards, he shoved her inside and disappeared.

The room was half-full of inmates staring blearily at the unappetizing mush in front of them. Clearly last night's tranquilizers hadn't quite worn off yet. Sorrow strolled through the room, trying to act casual as she got in line. Yeah. She ate breakfast with murderers and other felons every day. (Well, actually, she _did_, but they were _her_ felons and were unlikely to attack her if they valued their ability to breathe.) Right. Nothing to worry about...

She got her tray, with its bowl of pasty white oatmeal and half of a rapidly browning apple, and headed for the only empty table in the room. She only looked at the other tables long enough to see if they were occupied, not to notice details about their occupants. Taking in the human scenery like that could, in theory, be interpreted as 'staring', and it could probably get her killed. Then again, maybe not - but it's always wisest to err on the side that won't leave you bleeding out in a shadowy corner somewhere.

She settled herself at the empty table and promptly found out why it was empty. A leaky pipe just next to her dripped something noxious on the floorboards, sending little gusts of putrid air up at regular intervals. It was certainly not conducive to a good meal. But then again, neither was the food, or the company, or the building, so that was fine.

Sorrow picked up her spoon, for the look of the thing, and started tracing patterns in the gelatinous, gluey mess in her bowl.

* * *

If Sorrow had taken a moment to look around, the question of where she was would have resolved itself quite neatly in a few seconds, particularly if she'd happened to glance at the two tables occupying the center of the room.

The loose double line of inmates breakfasting quietly were actually Gotham's most infamous rogues. If the conversation amongst the double line of inmates wouldn't have tipped her off to their identity - particularly the Nightwing-vs.-Batgirl debate amongst most of the men - the fact that the occupants of the table included a half-faced man, a man clutching a wooden dummy and a green-skinned redhead definitely would have hinted as to her current location.

The Joker was in solitary confinement for trying to kill his psychiatrist. Again. And so, as was always the case when her beloved Puddin' was unavailable, Harley had firmly attached herself to Poison Ivy like a lonely kitten. During their conversation, Harley kept craning her neck all the way around like an owl spotting prey. "Harley," Ivy finally hissed, "what are you doing?"

"Tryin' ta look at the new girl, Red," Harley answered, still turned halfway around in her seat. "She looks like that girl we saw on the news last night."

Ivy looked closer at the girl, who she'd simply dismissed earlier. Add the costume, the face paint…actually, she could be the same one. "She does look similar."

"I'm gonna go see if she's her!" Harley swung herself off the bench and bounced over to the new girl, staying low so that the guards didn't see her. She seated herself next to the new girl and chirped "Hiya!"

The girl looked up, startled by the perky blonde that had suddenly materialized in her personal space. Her plastic spoon hit the tray with a soft _tick_ noise as she hid her hands under the table. "Um…hi…"

Harley was nothing if not direct. "So…was that you we saw on the news last night?"

"Me? Maybe…"

"Was it you makin' the Bat cry?"

The girl looked down at her plate suddenly, gulped nervously, and looked back up.

"Yeah."

Harley beamed triumphantly. "Yer gonna have to share that little secret with me! I've always _wanted_ to make the Bat cry! What's yer name?"

A little smile tugged at the corners of the girl's mouth for a moment. "Sorrow."

"Sorrow? Well, whatcha in for, Sorrow?"

Sorrow looked down at the congealing oatmeal. "I'm a menace to society, I guess."

Harley giggled. "Aren't we all? Oh, sorry, forgot the introduction. The name's Quinn, Harley Quinn, pleased ta meetcha." She stuck out her hand, inviting a handshake.

Sorrow looked at it as if it was an unexpected snake. "I can't touch you."

Harley drew back, offended. "Well, I'm not that bad! It's not like I'm asking you to shake with Clayface or nothin!"

Sorrow shook her head violently. "No, no, it's not that. They took away my gloves, and I'm not sure if these are good enough." She pulled her hands back out from under the table, showing off her alarmingly pink fingers. "I'm poisonous. I don't want to hurt you," she spelled out as Harley blinked with confusion.

"Oh, okay. You're like Red, then. I gotcha." Harley grinned.

"Red?"

"Ivy. Poison Ivy. Over there, see?" She waved at Ivy, who waved back, amused.

Sorrow, however, was thoroughly unamused. "Wait a minute. If that's Poison Ivy, and you're Harley Quinn…they sent me to _Arkham?_" Her face slackened into the despair generally only seen on the faces of children finding out that there is no Santa Claus.

Harley said "It's not as bad as that. Well, maybe it is, but it's not like you have to stay here for long, if you don't wanna. An' if you don't want to bother with escapin', they try to letcha out if you're good for a couple months at a time, cuz they think you're better, even if you're still wacked out," Harley finished. Sorrow was still staring off into the distance. "You still with me here, Sorrow?"

"I don't think they'd let me out like they do for you, Harley," Sorrow said, examining her hands. "I'm a special case."

"We're all special cases here! That's why this place is so famous."

"Yeah, but the only ones I've ever seen them let go are like you, or the Ventriloquist. Not anyone with..._powers,_" she spat, like she didn't want to use that word but couldn't think of anything to replace it.

Harley studied her for a second. Well, yes, it was true that they'd never let Ivy out before...but then again, Red had that habit of trying to off her doctors when they said that plants weren't important. "I think you'd better talk to Red…er, Ivy, Sorrow. She'll help ya out." Harley patted her on the shoulder and bounced back to her own table, brimming with news for Ivy.

* * *

After breakfast, the inmates adjourned to their cells. Some had sessions with their psychiatrists. Sorrow and a handful of other rogues - Mr. Freeze and Clayface among them - didn't. She assumed that like them, she had no psychiatrist because she wasn't crazy. Arkham was the only place for prisoners too "unique" to be allowed in a general prison population, after all. Maybe she should have expected to be put there. 

This was not to say that Sorrow wasn't still upset about being put there. At least in prison there were rules. The important ones were all unwritten, of course (Do Not Rat On Thy Fellow Inmates. Do Not Trust Thy Fellow Inmates. In Fact, Do Not Interact With Thy Fellow Inmates Any More Than Thou Hast To, To Prevent Thy Untimely Death) but at least she knew what to do to keep from being attacked. What were the rules here, where everyone was _expected_ to attack everyone else?

Maybe there weren't any. Maybe she should do what so many of the others did and skip out at the first opportunity. She flopped bonelessly down onto her bunk and let her gaze wander out the window, where through the close-set bars she could see a rolling expanse of green. From this distance, it looked quite peaceful and bucolic...that is, until you got close enough to the window to notice the ten-foot-tall electrified razor-wire fences that wrapped around the edges of the property.

Escape would be tricky, particularly since she hadn't even been there a full day yet. Where were the doors? What would happen to her if she tried to escape and failed? She'd never been in a mental institution before, so her vague knowledge about the place was about the same as the average person on the street: temporary home for rogues, electroshock therapy, rampant abuse (though the last two were more from the movies than from actual reports from Arkham)...Maybe she_wouldn't_ skip out right away. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to hang around and get the lay of the land. Yeah. Act nice and stay out of trouble, and run like hell when the opportunity presented itself.

She'd been lost in thought longer than she'd expected. An orderly was rapping on her window and barking "Lunchtime!" at her. She rolled to her feet and let him lead her down the hallway.

Lunchtime in institutions is _always_ more dangerous than breakfast. The inmates have had time to wake up and remember the fights from yesterday, or last month, or that time that that guy across the room made a face at them while they were watching tv, that _bastard_, and then would come the bloodshed and the violence...

That's why Sorrow avoided sitting with the other rogues and returned to her table in the far corner, the one that smelled suspiciously like rotten garbage. It was dangerous enough to even be in the same room with these people, let alone provoke them by taking what they might think was _their_ seat or _their _table. No one would willingly claim this table as their territory, at least no one she would worry about.

Oh, god. Through lowered eyelashes, she spotted a nondescript young man seating himself at the rogues' table. He'd at least been smart enough to pick the end seat, the one near the Riddler, the Ventriloquist, and the Scarecrow. Five whole minutes went by without a word or a look exchanged between him and the others. Well, maybe he'd make it through the meal alive...

"AAIIEEE!" She sighed. Maybe not. She couldn't tell what had happened, since she didn't want to be caught openly staring, but she saw the Ventriloquist snatch something out of the young man's hand before stalking away. The guards didn't bother to intervene. Stopping a squabble between little Arnold Wesker and the new fish wasn't their concern.

It should have been. Not two seconds after Wesker went on his way, the Scarecrow leaned in to ask the new guy something. He shook his head - "No" - and turned back to his food. Sorrow forgot about keeping a low profile and openly gaped as she saw the thin, bookish rogue swing a fork into the classic stabbing position above his head. In one smooth motion, he brought the fork down.

"AARRRH!" the man shrieked, clutching his wrist and staring disbelievingly at the fork handle wobbling cheerfully in the back of his hand. Blood trickled from his palm down the tines of the fork and splashed quietly on the table. Yes, it was clearly a mistake to sit with the rogues, a thought that was emphatically reinforced when she saw the Scarecrow peering through his pince-nez and observing the reaction of the man as if he was nothing but a lab rat. Which, she supposed, he probably _was_, to the Scarecrow, anyway...

And then the man at the other side of the Scarecrow punched the professor in the head, setting off a riot. Trays thwacked down hard on heads and necks. Food sprayed across the walls, spattering the tan paint with sick yellowish sludge. The man with the fork in his hand crawled desperately across the room, heading right toward Sorrow.

Sorrow was ignoring the riot, choosing instead to shovel the rest of her lunch into her mouth. She knew full well what would probably happen next: everyone involved would be sequestered in their cells until further notice. They'd be sentenced to sandwiches, and even though this yellowish casserole slop was nasty, at least it was hot.

A thump on her calf made her leap from her seat and back up against the wall. The sad little fork-handed man was under her table, watching the other inmates with round, scared eyes as they beat hell out of one another and the guards. A gap-toothed guard rushed in, leading the charge of other guards and screaming "LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN!" as he tore into the inmates.

Sorrow wanted no part of the beatings the guards were dishing out. When the guards had gotten the major players in the riot taken care of, they turned their attention to the little table in the corner. Sorrow stood there, calmly finishing her bread roll as the fork-handed man quivered on the floor. "Hands up!" they barked, advancing with tasers at the ready.

Sorrow tucked the last bite of bread into her mouth and obligingly raised her hands. The fork man screeched as a guard yanked him out of his hiding place by his injured arm. "Rough day?" she said sweetly to one bleeding guard as he grabbed her arm and dragged her back toward her cell.

"No rougher than most," he grunted at her. It wasn't long before she was back in her cell, watching the parade of inmates returning from the infirmary in a variety of bandages and restraints.

Clearly, she mused, this was a place to walk carefully.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: If you're schizophrenic and you rob a bank, you're only criminally insane if the schizophrenia made you do it. That's why modern jails in the US have a startling amount of mentally unwell people dwelling within them. Sad, but true. _

_The riot scene was taken from Arkham Asylum: Living Hell - with, of course, a minor addition or two. _


	4. Stranger Danger

Lockdowns in Arkham never lasted very long. Since most of the inmates were governed solely by their psychoses, it was largely pointless to institute any kind of long-term punishment. By tomorrow, the little voices whispering 'riot!' may have switched to whispering 'eat that floor tile!' or 'demand a frilly tutu!' And of the inmates who were theoretically sane enough to know better, a round of medication and restraints would hopefully knock the crazy right out of them.

Of course, Sorrow didn't know any of this. She had assumed that the lockdown would last a few days, maybe a week - and yet she found herself being hustled off to the cafeteria not twenty-four hours after the riot. She sat at her little, smelly table, slowly picking at her limp turkey sandwich.

The inmates in the cafeteria were subdued today. If the lingering tranquilizers in their systems weren't the cause of it, then the bevy of guards stationed around the room certainly was. Everyone was muttering to one another about the riot and its aftermath. Since everyone was fairly distracted, Sorrow felt that it was safe to sneak a quick peek at her fellow inmates.

Unlike the rest of them, the rogues seated at the main table looked pretty much the same as they had yesterday. A few were missing - the Scarecrow had obviously been separated in order to teach him that all-important lesson: stick a fork in people and you're done - but she was surprised to note that some of the other major players in the riot were there. She distinctly remembered the Riddler braining a guard with a lunch tray...but there he was, fastidiously flicking bits of brownish tomato off of his sandwich. Maybe no one else had seen him...

Or maybe no one wanted to punish him. Ah! _That_ made a lot of sense. Did the rogues get special privileges? Obviously the ones in charge couldn't overlook _everything_ the rogues did, but it certainly would explain how they managed to get in and out of Arkham so easily.

The Riddler glanced up and met her eyes. _Dammit_! She ducked her head and stared at her sandwich, embarrassed to be caught staring. When she finally worked up the courage to glance his way again, he was still looking at her, only now with 100 extra added smirk. _Dammit_!

The end of lunch couldn't come fast enough for Sorrow. She almost cheered when the guard by the doorway announced that lunch was over and it was time to go. She bolted from her chair and turned in her tray, bouncing impatiently as the lady counted and re-counted her silverware to make sure she hadn't taken any of it. Was he still looking? She hazarded a glance backward.

The Riddler was whispering to the Mad Hatter, who was grinning cheekily in her direction. Oh, this was bad. People did not survive when the rogues took an interest in them. She melted into the line of inmates and tried to keep out of sight in the endless years that it took for everyone to turn in their trays and fall into line.

The line slowly shuddered into motion, guards on either side verbally goading the inmates along in the required direction. They missed the turn to the hallway that housed Sorrow's cell. Well, maybe they were starting to drop inmates off in their cells at the other end, or something?

But then she noticed that the line was being fed through a pair of dark, heavy double doors. The guards, clustering outside, shooed their charges in like farmers herding chickens. She looked around, wide-eyed, hoping to determine what kind of weirdness was up next.

The room was full of furniture. Chairs, tables, couches...a television blared electronic babble over the crowd as they slouched into their accustomed spots.

Oh, god, it was a recreation room! And everyone from lunch was going in! And they were certain to stay for at _least_ an hour...she was locked in a room with the rogues' gallery and no guards and...

_Now, calm down_! she ordered herself, slinking over to the wall and pressing her shoulder blades hard against it. Showing fear was _bad_, right? She had to look like she belonged here or she'd be eaten alive.

She rearranged herself into something like a casual pose and fixed her gaze on the TV. In theory, ignoring the stream of inmates as they stumbled past her, but in reality, aware of every thudding footstep and musky whiff of unwashed insanity. The last inmate wobbled in and settled on the floor as the heavy doors slammed shut with a _clang_.

Sorrow lounged in nerve-wrenching quiet for a full five minutes. Then - "Hey…new girl," came a throaty voice from her right. Sorrow turned and saw Poison Ivy resting at a tiny table for two set by the door. "Harley said I should talk to you. Come on over and have a seat."

Great. Fantastic. Sorrow eased up from the wall and approached her, wincing as her brand new laceless shoes squeaked noisily on the tile. She settled herself in the empty chair and regarded Ivy with suspicious eyes. "Yes?"

"Do you know _why_ Harley wanted me to talk to you?" she inquired, her voice slathered with boredom and ennui.

"She mentioned you after I told her I was...well, poison," Sorrow muttered.

Interest sparked in Ivy's green eyes. "And?"

Sorrow shrugged. What did she want from her, anyway?

Ivy frowned. "You know," she purred, "I'd hate to have to _make_ you tell me anything..." She flicked a finger at a cheerful fern in the corner. It wrapped its fronds around a nearby exposed water pipe and throttled it meaningfully.

Sorrow swallowed hard. Her first death threat from a major rogue. Now _there_ was a moment for a scrapbook. "What do you want to know?" she asked guardedly.

"Who you are. What you do."

Sorrow glanced away for a moment, only to find that the Riddler, the Hatter, and Two-Face were each shooting little interested looks in her direction. Harley Quinn was openly staring with a curious look on her face. "And they want to know too?"

"It's always interesting to meet someone new," Ivy said offhandedly. Sorrow knew very well what _that_ translated into: fresh meat was fun to torment.

"And I'm going to end up telling them anyway, right?" Sorrow uneasily shifted in her seat.

Ivy merely smiled.

"Can I just tell everyone at once?" Sorrow asked.

Ivy considered her for a moment. "I don't see why not." She beckoned Harley over with a regal wave of her slim green hand. Harley shot to her feet as if she was leaving the starting blocks and scampered over. "Get the others," Ivy ordered.

"Sure thing, Red!" Harley skipped around the room, tapping rogues on the shoulder and pointing them toward the table. Sorrow looked fixedly at her pink-gloved hands until the scraping of moving chairs had ceased. When she looked up, seven of the top-tier rogues in the city had clustered around her.

This was going to take some _seriously_ fancy footwork. She ducked her gaze back down to her hands and slowly began extracting the glove from inside her sleeve.

"Well?" growled Two-Face. "We want to hear this."

"Hush," whispered Edward, "let her talk." Two-Face, irritated, glanced sideways at him and flipped his coin. When it came up unscratched, he muttered something obscene to himself regarding Eddie's parentage.

"My name is Sorrow," she said, gently folding the long cuff of the glove down over her wrist.

"What's yer _real_ name?" Harley piped up.

Sorrow paused, her glove half-off. "What?"

"Yer real name! Like that's Eddie, an' Harvey, an' Pammy..."

"My real name is Sorrow." She shrugged. "No one's called me anything else for years." The glove slipped off of her hand with a muted _snap_ of stretching latex. "Like I told Harley, I'm poisonous." The circle of rogues looked at her bare, black-smeared palm. It glistened ebony in the harsh white lights of Arkham, as if she'd been petting a penguin fresh from the oil slick.

"What's it do?" Harley asked, cocking her head to one side.

Ivy shot her an exasperated look. "If she's named _Sorrow_, what do you _think_ it does?"

Harley stuck out her tongue in reply.

"She's right," Sorrow said, slowly inserting her hand into the glove again. If she wasn't careful, the black stuff would get on the inside of the wrist and get smeared up her arm, and she _hated_ when that happened. It always left her arm feeling itchy. "This stuff makes people sad. Really sad. Suicidal, even." She wriggled her fingers into place and folded the wrist of the glove back up. The mild tension that had briefly gripped the group - the sort you feel when something deadly may be about to happen to someone else - melted away.

"Is there any antidote?" asked Edward.

"My tears. They contain the polar opposite of the chemical in my hands. One cancels out the other."

Within the privacy of their own minds, each rogue put together the necessary information. Her toxins made people cry, and Batman was crying, and her toxins were lethal...Naturally, Eddie got there first. "Did you cry on the Batman?" he demanded. The group, developing solemn, stony faces, watched her carefully.

"Um," Sorrow started uncertainly.

"Did you or didn't you?" Two-Face growled.

She couldn't tell them what had _really_ happened. In fact, she didn't want to tell them anything about that night.

She had expected him to cry. _Everyone_ cried when she touched them. Actually seeing it, though, was unsettling. He was openly sobbing as Sammy and Sorrow had wrestled him up onto the bed and secured him in place. After he was down, Sammy had gone, and Sorrow had nestled quietly at his feet and waited.

It didn't take too much longer for him to start reliving his tragedies - shouting warnings and regrets into the creaky, echoey darkness of Sorrow's warehouse. She'd sat and listened to him crying for his parents, and his dead foster son, and his alienated foster son. Heroes that were dead died again. Lovers betrayed him, over and over in an endless parade of misery.

Not that he remembered telling her any of this, of course. Thankfully. If he knew that _she_ knew about the little demons of sadness lurking in his mind, he'd probably smear her across Fifth Avenue. It was definitely in her best interest to keep her mouth firmly closed on the subject of the Batman.

She had eventually cried on him just to shut him up. No one should have that much horror in their past. Hearing it was making her sick.

Even remembering it now was sending little prickly stabs of sympathy up her back. The rogues were waiting for an answer, and it had to be something that wouldn't piss them off, and it had to be logical, and it had to avoid any hint of letting out Batman's secrets.

A lie, in other words. So she looked them right in the eyes and lied like a rug. She told them that Batman had cried like a brokenhearted schoolgirl (which he had) and that, wailing hysterically, he'd clung to her leg like a toddler (which he certainly hadn't). She couldn't hope to move him, so she'd had to cry on him to get him to let go.

Unfortunately, she'd underestimated his ability to spring back from toxins and he'd gotten to his feet before she'd been able to get to the door. The rogues that dealt in toxins nodded thoughtfully - it had happened to them, and more than once at that.

"And that was pretty much that," she concluded, fiddling with the elastic on her gloves. _Oh, please let them be satisfied with that_, she thought. She didn't know if she could come up with any more lies on this short notice.

"But then why'd ya let the Bat take ya?" Harley chirped, cocking her head to one side.

"Huh?" Sorrow said, startled.

"We saw ya on the news," Harley reminded her. "No cuffs, you weren't fightin' back...You gave the Bat a hanky an' you were blowin' him _kisses_."

_Oh, damn._ "I, uh...I don't like being hit," she mumbled to the tabletop. "And I guess...well...maybe since I was nice to him last time, he'll go easier on me next time?"

No one came out and said it, but the words _Yeah, right, and then he'll take you out for ice cream and buy you a pony_ were written on every face in the circle.

* * *

It's hard to entertain yourself when all you have is your mind. Sorrow was using hers to take a short little vacation to the Bahamas. Tropic sun, a cool breeze over her face, the sound of the ocean roaring...never mind the fact that the 'sun' was a flickering fluorescent bulb, the breeze was the malfunctioning heater, and the ocean roaring was an inmate down the way howling the word "Fish!" at someone. She was in the Bahamas, dammit, at least for an hour or two. 

A steel drum turned into someone beating on the plexiglass at the front of her cell. She sighed and sat up, meeting the eyes of a fat little orderly. "Come on, time for your session," he said irritably.

"With who?"

"Your shrink."

"I don't have a shrink," she informed him coldly. "I'm not crazy."

The orderly, who had been briefed on this particular patient when he got in to work that day, looked for the right words to say. Somehow, saying "We got a note from Batman saying that you're nuttier than a fruitcake" didn't seem to be the best idea in the world, particularly since he felt like living for another few decades. He opted for refuge in ignorance. "Don't look at me, lady, I'm just supposed to take you there and take you back."

She sighed and got to her feet. She'd get this ridiculous _session_ over with, and then she'd get back to the islands. Besides, did it really matter if they thought she was crazy? It's not like they were ever going to let her out.

As the orderly led her by all the cells, she smiled in a friendly fashion at the inhabitants. Not many smiled back, though the Riddler did give her a saucy wink as she strolled by. She took particular care to wave at Harley Quinn, who was singing a love song as she toyed with a stuffed jester doll. After all, Harley had been the only one to be openly friendly to her so far, and Sorrow really didn't want to piss off the Joker's girlfriend. (There _were_ rules in Arkham, she'd discovered. On a list of them, if there were such a thing, Rule 1 would be 'Don't Anger the Joker', written in big letters with neon ink, underlined twice.) Harley waved back and even chirped "Hiya!" before returning to her toy.

The little section of offices that housed the psychiatrists for the Rogues Gallery was located just around the corner behind a series of three solid steel doors. (Just because they were brave enough to try to pry open the rogues' minds didn't mean they were brave enough to chance escaping rogues prying open their office doors.) Sorrow took note of the names as she passed them - Carlson. Torres. Jackson. Lily. Bartholomew.

They stopped at the door with no label. The orderly led her inside, to a tiny waiting room barely big enough to hold a secretary at a desk and a pair of chairs. One of them, Sorrow saw with unease, was rigged out with all kinds of restraint clips and straps. The secretary tapped a button on her desk, presumably letting the doctor know that they were there, and went back to her paperwork.

They didn't have to wait long. Another orderly breezed in. "Hey, June. Horace," he greeted the two other employees, ignoring Sorrow. He knocked politely on the office door before opening it.

"Don't worry so much," the new doctor was advising whoever happened to be in there with him. "You'll get it back tomorrow, and you'll see - you'll be absolutely fine."

The orderly went into the room and returned walking backwards, pulling a straitjacketed Two-Face in a reverse conga line. Sorrow and her orderly did an awkward little shuffle around the imposing rogue, who at the moment looked as if he couldn't decide whether to fall into catatonic depression or incandescent fury. The orderly, obviously not wanting to be there when the upcoming emotional storm broke, tugged Two-Face out of the room as fast as possible.

"Come in!" the doctor invited. Horace, seeing Sorrow hesitating on the threshold, applied a helpful elbow into her spine.

With an undignified "Oof!" she stumbled into the room, colliding with the strap-covered chair bolted to the floor in front of the desk. When she raised her eyes to the thin Asian man seated behind the desk, she saw him playing smugly with what appeared to be...no, it couldn't. No one would be stupid enough to...

"That's his _coin_," she blurted, seeing the distinctive scratches in the back of it catch the light. "You took his _coin_?"

"Temporarily," he said, examining it once before dropping it into his pocket.

"But doesn't he need that?" she said. "I heard he can't decide_anything_ without it..."

"Well, we'll soon see that theory proved false," he smiled at her.

_Jerk_, she thought.

"Have a seat," he invited, waving at the little chair. She fastidiously swept the straps off of the seat before sitting down. "Now," he said, taking up a pen, "let's get started, shall we?"

"Okay," she said cautiously.

"What's your name?"

"Sorrow."

He gave her a disdainful look. "Your _real_ name."

"That_ is_ my real name."

He shook his head sadly and noted it down. "And where are you?"

She stared at him like he was an idiot. "Your office."

He returned her stare, packing even more disdain into it. "And where is my office?" he hinted.

Sorrow was baffled. She'd never been asked questions this ridiculous before. "Right here," she said slowly and patiently.

"Hmm," he said, adopting that sad look again briefly as he scribbled something else down. "Do you know the date?"

This was beyond ridiculous. She pointed at the back of a page-a-day desk calendar sitting obviously on the corner of his otherwise empty desk. "Can't you read?"

"That was not the question," he said sternly. "Do _you_ know the date?"

"It's, um..." She took a moment to think. "It's the nineteenth of April, isn't it?"

"Are you certain?" he said.

"Well, let's see," she said, picking up the calendar. "It's...now I _know_ that's wrong," she said, pointing at the current page which proclaimed it to be the third of September. "Why do you even have this thing if you're not going to keep it on the right day?"

He ignored her. "And do you know who I am?"

"Should I?" she said, slamming the calendar back down onto the desk.

"Yes." He waited for her response.

Her first instinct was to scream something obscene at him. But, with the vivid memory of straitjackets and restraint straps dancing in front of her eyes, she forced calm into her voice and said "I have no idea who you are." _We've never met, how the hell would I know your name_? she thought angrily to herself.

"Dear, dear," he muttered to himself, taking more notes. "Now, do you know why you're here?"

_Because the forces of the universe decided it was time for me to meet the world's biggest idiot?_ she thought. "Because this is where Batman brought me?" she hazarded.

"And why do you think he chose to bring you here?" he asked.

"Because I'm doomed?" she said without thinking. His eyes lit up as he carefully inscribed her words onto his paper. She groaned internally. "I didn't _mean_ that," she protested.

"Now, when you say you're doomed-"

"I said I didn't mean that!"

"-how exactly do you think you're doomed?" His eyes glowed with the avarice of a hunter on the trail of the Big One.

"I'm _not_!"

"Hmmm," he said, clearly not willing to believe her but letting it go for now.

The next hour was one of the most frustrating and baffling that Sorrow had ever lived through. The doctor (he hadn't even told her his name!) had asked her all sorts of personal questions, which she flat-out refused to answer. She wasn't particularly proud of her past, and she'd be damned if she let this little weasel sniff through her private business. He'd tried to get her to admit to everything from being suicidal to hearing voices to believing in telepathy and government cover-ups and aliens in her brain.

"Well," he sighed at the end of his interrogation, "I can see we have a long way to go."

"What?" Sorrow said, totally confused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, there are so many problems to cover," he said cheerfully. "You're obviously in severe denial of major issues. You believe that you're a being comprised of sadness and yet you claim never to have tried suicide-"

"That's not what I said," she tried to defend herself.

"-you exhibit violent tendencies-"

"Like what?" she demanded. He ignored her.

"-and you believe that you're doomed and that your life is not worth thinking about, let alone worth a mere half-hour's discussion," he finished happily. "My dear, I got here just in time!"

"Now wait a minute," she protested. "I never said half that stuff!"

"Psychiatry is about reading between the lines, dear," he said smugly.

"Then you need new glasses!" she snapped. "I can't believe you actually believe that...that _nonsense_ about me! Who the hell do you think you are?"

The door behind them opened and Horace stepped in. The doctor tented his fingers and gave Sorrow a long, slow grin. "I'm Dr. Teng, your psychiatrist," he said with an air of reminding a simpleton that we eat with spoons, not fingers. "I'll see you again tomorrow."

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" she said as Horace tugged her out of the room. The door swung shut behind them.

"Fortunately, you don't," Teng murmured to himself as he looked over his notes. Truth be told, he _didn't_ believe that nonsense about her. Well, most of it, anyway. He'd clearly sniffed out a trace of despair about her, particularly when she was forced to think about her childhood. Oh, yes, even though she hadn't given away any details he was _certain_ he'd caught hold of some _very_ poignant memories.

And, of course, if she was depressed that meant he'd finally found the perfect subject...no one cared about the health or well-being of_ rogues_, after all, and given the right excuse he'd be able to go ahead and start testing his new medicine right away. Surely if he needled her enough she'd do something really _entertaining_ to another rogue, and then they could begin.

Dr. Teng sat back in his chair, a satisfied grin on his thin face. This was going to be such fun!

* * *

_Author's Note: Sorry this was late. I've been sick and busy, never a good combination. _

_I suppose now would be a good time to point out that this takes place a little farther back in history than you may have been expecting. Nightwing is still gloriously rebellious, Barbara has not quite yet relinquished the title of Batgirl, and Jason is newly deceased. Ah, for the heady days of 1988! _

_Tune in next Monday for part two of Sorrow's story - sadly, it has no title as of yet - and Thursdays still belong to 'Green Eyes'. Thanks for reading!_


End file.
